


Lettered

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Castiel in Purgatory, Castiel is typography, Dean in Purgatory, Episode: s07e23 Survival of the Fittest, Horror, Hurt Dean Winchester, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Psychological Horror, Purgatory, Season/Series 07, irresolution, metaphysical weirdness, superreal horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dean loses his Euclidean edges.  He is vanishing under his own blueprint.  But all Dean says is, Purgatory needs to get its pansy act together.  Because this is nothing new.</i>
</p><p>All God's stories leave you with a sense of unpleasant eternity; Castiel watches as Dean comes unwritten. Purgatory fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lettered

Castiel: "You have a very old conception of laughter."

Dean: Another joke, neither helpful nor particularly good. 

It is not because Castiel doesn't understand; he knows it makes reference to a period on Earth that Dean has never lived (though still a relatively new one). He knows it is about music. But Dean's laughter is heavy and bitter and full of contempt, and the joke is not funny. Then Dean starts to sing, under his breath but above silence. It sounds much the same.

"Many of your older poets believed that laughter was an effect of ridicule, not happiness. When Lucifer was cast from Heaven, this brothers laughed. They did not rejoice in his going, they simply ridiculed his--"

"Cas," Dean says finally, because it's far from Castiel's first story. "Of course it's fucking ridiculous. We're in motherfucking Purgatory, and everything is fucking--" Dean slashes at something near his feet, with the knife Sam's demon brought from Hell. He lets its squeal finish his sentence.

"Sorry," Dean mutters sometime later. He isn't, not really, but for now they are past that. They have other concerns. Castiel plunges forward in silence. 

He's not sure, but he thinks his knees are starting to ache. He doesn't know how long they've been walking. He can't remember whether Purgatory was created linear; maybe here, there's no such thing as "long."

 

\--

 

When they come to the end of the world, white and frayed and tenuously substantial, Dean steps three paces back and turns around. Castiel watches the white behind him knit together to form more endless trees, the way it always does. "Fractals," says Castiel, and Dean nods, turns back, keeps walking. Maybe he agrees. Maybe he's listening. More likely he's just wishing for a cliff--something new and dangerously final. He's had enough of trees, and he can't hide it anymore. 

Castiel knows, and knows that look. Most of the stories forget, but Lucifer was not the only angel to Fall; he is the most famous to be cast down, certainly, but Castiel has seen many angels simply drift away. Like tiny paper kites, they'd spill from the margins of Heaven and fade downward--because Heaven was too impossible, or simply not paying enough attention. Because Heaven simply _wasn't_. He wonders how many of his brothers ended up here.

Castiel is at Dean's back, is almost biting his back (sweat, blood) before he realizes Dean is stopped. Dean is leaning against a half-realized tree. His shoulder slumps against its invisible trunk, and it's as though the shuddering limbs above them are sprouting from Dean himself.

"You stopped walking."

"Nothing," says Dean, breathless, before he realizes Castiel has asked no question.

"Purgatory is God's unfinished project," Castiel supplies in its place. "Sometimes things are not as they should be." 

Dean just wants to know what that makes Earth. ("Proof of God's ADD?")

Castiel steps over invisible tree roots. Sometimes you can see through the trees, he all wants to say. He doesn't know why. It's self-evident. The desire to scream out every word inside him burns inside him. The silence batters at his throat like a pressure valve: _Let us free._

 

\--

 

The monsters in Purgatory keep their noises low to the ground, but their shadows betray them. Here, your shadow is your true face, not simply your most terrifying one. Castiel's has wings. Someday soon they will be nothing but raw sinew straining from bone to bone, but they will always be his.

"Huh. You're an angel, after all," Dean says, as light and wry as he can manage. Castiel is awarded the smile he suspects Dean's spent his life trying to perfect. Dean slaps him on the back, the way he often did with Sam. (Perhaps less often. Castiel doesn't keep track. Usually.) 

Dean's shadow looks like Dean. It has no claws, or spikes, or fangs. No tail. Only two arms, and two legs. Just Dean.

"Sounds about right," Dean says, when Castiel points this out. His lips form a grim thin line. 

 

\--

 

"There's a reason dragons went extinct," Dean says. "Well, sorta extinct."

He kicks at a rock.

"The ones that're left--we all know what the fuck we're doing."

Dean throws up his hands like he's the rock star all his jokes are about, and kicks the rock as hard as he can. "Who'd suspect this face?" 

The rock makes a downward sound, and Dean pitches after it. It's just more trees, though. A little hill, and a grove of semi-transparent trees. "Look me in the eyes and ask me if I'm lying," he says, and laughs again.

 

\--

 

Paper monsters suffer Purgatory's winds in flocks and droves, their two-dimentional wings catching the gusts that rip them across the sky, make a mockery sunsets with their blood.

Dean uncoils. His cells become dark lines, brushstroke thin, until his hands are only pictures of hands and his back is a blot to contrast the translucence of the forest around it. He loses his Euclidean edges--a walking watercolor.

The worst part, Castiel thinks, is that Dean doesn't seem to notice. Dean's heart is beating with the fretful tap of his maker's pencil, and his organs pump and suck and twist in accordance with a diagram of arrows; his blood flows blue and red. Dean is vanishing under his own blueprint, and he doesn't even notice.

"Purgatory is God's unfinished business," Castiel explains; he hopes that knowledge will make Dean wary. "You see the monsters. Purgatory takes them back to their beginnings. They're just paper. We will all"--he picks up one of the paper birds (just its wing), stained sun-red--"be paper, in the end."

"Good talk, Cas," says Dean. "Bottom of the ninth, 0-93, and I think we're gonna win it. Go team."

Castiel ignores him. "It's a predictable feeling. I thought if you knew, you might--"

Dean turns toward Castiel, all his colors running together. His lines are fresh, a little shaky. His ink glistens. He says, "This is nothing new."

He says Purgatory needs to get its pansy act together, because this feeling is nothing new. 

"What else you got?" he shouts.

Up the ante.

 

\--

 

Castiel's knees are stiff.

 

\--

 

Purgatory is not the bloodbath either of them were expecting. There are monsters, of a sort. There are the broken ideas of monsters, just papers and shadows. Elaborate phantasmagoria. They've shed their being, like the tails off lizards, become part of a black ooze with no name and no mind. Castiel suspects that in order to endure a millenia in Purgatory, you have to let go of every part of yourself that would not sustain the damage. There is no survival; just erasure.

Hello, old friend, he thinks, as his white light erupts from the inside of a sinuous nothing. Were you a brother, once? An enemy?

Dean, of course, names them. Listlessly at first: Jefferson Starship. Jefferson Starship. Jefferson Starship. Then with more vitriol, though no more creatively.

"Dick Roman."

"Dick Roman again."

Twenty-seven Dick Romans, his voice a hateful, guttural tremor.

"Ruby."

Castiel had almost forgotten Ruby. Dean names her in Purgatory only once.

 

\--

 

Castiel watches Dean watch the makeshift spit that bridges one edge of their fire to the next. A monster--or a part of one--is burning. Dean names this one Alistair.

"Do you intend to eat that?"

Fat hangs from the bottom of the charring meat, drops, crackles and pops as it hits the ground.

"Well, Cas," Dean begins. "I'm not seeing another option here." It's only then Castiel notices how pale Dean is. How tired. "You may have noticed, but nothing else is fucking _real_ here. I--" he says.

"I--"

 

\--

 

The wheeze of Dean's lungs as he throws everything up. The shudder of the lines of his back, reverberating like piano wire. They make a song that sounds like the wind in Purgatory.

Dean's ribs heave. He spits. His arms shake (deep bass pulse), and all his color sifts to the bottom of him, leaving his cheeks paper white, almost vanished entirely. Dean's body convulses one last time, though there's nothing left in his stomach--Castiel can see it now, diagram perfect.

Castiel can see Dean's ribs, too. Somewhere beneath the logical construction of flesh, Castiel can see the sigils still buried there, part of the collection of words that create Dean. 

In Castiel's experience, some people are stories, and others are not. If Dean is a story (and Castiel suspects that he is), it's not a story Dean will ever read. Dean's words are made of letters that are actually hinges. His letters creak as he stumbles forward, back toward Castiel. He doesn't look like Dean at all--just typography and still-wet paint.

"Do you feel embodied?" Castiel asks.

Dean gives him a look. Dean doesn't say them out loud, but Castiel can see dark words arranging themselves inside his stomach. He watches Dean push them down.

"Yes, Cas," Dean says instead. "I'm feeling pretty fucking embodied." 

 

\--

 

Dean is asleep before Castiel can suggest it. They don't get to have the argument Castiel has watched Dean wage with Sam time and time again. But then, there are no dreams in Purgatory. There is simply no dimension for them.

Castiel traces Dean's ribs with his fingers, and his lips move with the words he placed there. They are not especially artful. Dean's ribs, in their tenuous corporeality, do not show through his skin. They will not for some time, Castiel is sure. Humans possess a kind of resilience that is particular to their bodies--fragile in many ways, yes, but difficult to destroy without applying considerable explosive force. The have organs made of God's own letters. 

Right now, Dean's letters are pooling at the bottom of him, like death bruises.

 

\--

 

And then Dean is awake, his breathing irregular. Castiel first attributes this to illness, but Dean's eyes are locked on him.

"What?" asks Castiel, which is a question that will never quite come naturally.

"Nothing," says Dean, though his hands are pulsing with adrenaline-laced vowels.

"You have your knife in your hand."

"You have _me_ in your hand." 

Castiel's fingers leap from Dean's ribs, suddenly molten. "Apologies."

"It doesn't have anything to do with you." Dean drags his fingers down his face and takes a deep, shuddering breath.

"In Purgatory--" Castiel begins.

Dean shakes his head, then regrets it. His brow knits. "That's just--you don't touch people when they're sleeping. You don't touch _armed_ people when they're sleeping. And it doesn't matter whether you're in Purgatory or not. It just--I just--"

 

\--

 

Dean is a skeleton of words. When they're spent he'll disappear entirely. he will         disappear

entirely he will  
disappear

 

"Cas?" Dean barks--not, it seems, for the first time. He looks troubled.  
 "Cas?"

(--Dean looks as troubled as a paper mask can be, in any case. His blueprint is sun-faded today. He's just white scraps blown together. Even his lines are slipping from him.)

"Cas? Are you-- 'cause you're not--

 

Cas?"

Then Castiel bites him. Castiel kisses him. From his very few encounters, Castiel is not sure the two are as disparate as language would have them seem. Castiel finds his lips and tries to wrap the skin around Dean's bones from there. Wrap muscle around the written core of him. The kiss itself is purely mechanical; more an anchor point than anything else. Skin, Castiel thinks. Muscle. Organs. A body to hold together all Dean's words.

When Castiel opens his eyes, Dean is Dean again. His lips are bleeding and he's still hazy around the edges, but he's flesh instead of lines and letters. Castiel sighs deep.

Dean wipes the blood from his face and promptly throws up again.

 

\--

 

Dean is under the impression that there is something very wrong with Castiel, and he's said as much. Some part of Castiel that Castiel cannot control is determined to talk over him. It's the part of Castiel that knows bees, board games. Earth's various ephemera. That part of Castiel does not appreciate Dean's self-righteousness. Castiel is not the one falling apart in front of his (whose?) eyes.

Listen to me, says Dean, with the regularity of windstorms. "Cas, listen to me."

Listen to me.  
Listen to me.  
Listen to me.

 

Castiel is words on the outside and grace in the middle. If he must weave himself back together, then he must speak. He must speak the word of God. (And Castiel knows many of those--both many Gods, and many stories. There are very many stories. Castiel's favorites tend to be little known, lost in--)

Dammit, Cas, shut the fuck up and listen to me, says Dean, whose words are escaping from his hands and his eyes more than they are from his mouth. And Castiel spent all that energy putting him back together again.

"Listen to _yourself_ ," Dean shouts, before he grabs Castiel's jaw and holds them face to face. "Just--" Dean looks from left to right, through the half-realized trees, like he's looking for the words he let loose. Finally: "Just shut up. One minute. One minute, okay?" Then he presses heavily on Castiel's shoulders and forces him to sit on a felled tree, even though Castiel's knees don't want to bend.

Castiel can see the ground beneath its trunk, squirming with shadows and bog. When Dean moves to sit beside Castiel, the bog sucks him down. He slips. His face breaks against Castiel's shoulder like a wave, in a surf of useless words.

Castiel is about to speak again when Dean grabs his knee and wrenches himself up out of the deep mud. Castiel's knee, by this point swollen to the point of unfeeling, doesn't register Dean's weight. 

Of course, when Castiel looks up, Dean is all lines and paper again. Naturally, he is weightless. Naturally.

"I tried," Castiel believes it is important to insist. I tried to save you. But this is nothing new.

Dean's still watching him in a strange way. "Do you--?" Dean starts, then laughs. It's the same old flavor of laughter. "Do you feel 'embodied,' Cas?"

Dean is staring at him. Through him--and through the trees and trees and trees that exist beyond him. There's something in his face (a child's scrawl, or a drunkard's--is this what we are when the paint peels off?) that Castiel cannot place. It is not quite fear, and not quite repulsion. Laced with concern, though this is not the heart of it. The heart is something that lost its word long ago. There is something showing on Castiel that only Dean can see.

"You're starting to," Dean coughs. "If there's something going on with you, I need to know. I'm gonna be honest with you, you are start to weird the _crap_ out of--"

 Castiel can hear the smack of dry lips, though he can no longer see them. He smells the blood. Maybe Dean wipes it away with his hand again, and maybe he doesn't. Dean is an empty sheet of paper. When the wind comes, it will take Dean with it, a thousand paper birds wiped clean. No more words, and no more shadows.

Castiel laughs.  
 


End file.
